Brian Eno and Karl Hyde announce new album, High Life, stream “DBF”

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Earlier this month, Brian Eno and Underworld co-founder Karl Hyde released a collaborative album entitled Someday World. Shortly before the album’s release, however, the duo booked additional studio time to flesh out some of the ideas left over from their initial sessions, leading to a second LP. Entitled High Life, it’s out July 1st on CD and digitally and August 25th on vinyl via Warp Records. Remind us, what’s the record for quickest follow-up?

The six-track efforts spans 45 minutes and promises to carry on the glitch-funk flavor of Someday World. According to a press release, “High Life is the clearest expression yet of the ‘Reickuti’ (Steve Reich<>Fela Kuti) direction that first brought this new collaboration into being.” The artwork, above, was designed by Eno.

In a statement, Eno discussed the album’s recording process and the sense of urgency he and Hyde shared in recording these fresh ideas: “When Someday World was finished, I felt like we were still on a roll and I wasn’t ready to stop working and get into ‘promotional mode’ for that record. So I suggested we immediately start on another album, a different one, where we extended some of the ideas we’d started, and attempted some of the ideas we hadn’t.”

Among the new ideas was to live-process Hyde’s guitar, “so that we would be effecting one another’s performance, bouncing off each other, inspiring new combinations of polyrhythms,” Hyde explained.

The album’s first single, “DBF”, finds the duo playing a game of musical back-and-forth. Hyde comes in immediately with a hyper-percussive guitar line, while Eno’s stuttering synthesizers clash excitedly over top. It feels like an experiment blending a 1960s funk jam and Radiohead-inspired sonics.Listen in below: